How To Know and Follow Your Soul: A Complete Guide
You sense there’s more to your life. Something beneath the surface that hasn’t fully expressed itself yet.
That’s your soul.
As a soul coach and active co-creator in my own life, I’ve witnessed repeatedly, in my life and the lives of many others, how the universe is constantly guiding, comforting, and holding us so that we will evolve the soul. I’m the author of The Butterfly Silhouette, winner of the San Francisco Book Festival in both Spirituality and Poetry, with 12 Principles for following your soul.
My work is committed to helping you recognize and receive the spiritual communication and soul mission that is present in your life.
This is your complete guide to follow your soul and understand this eternal and true part of you.
6 Elements for Aligning with Your Soul
This video breaks down what it really means to live in soul alignment, and how to actually connect with your soul.
Understanding the Soul
Most of us were never taught to think about the soul in a real, practical way. It was either a religious concept or something vague and poetic that didn’t feel tangible.
But the soul is so much more.
What Is the Soul?
The soul is the eternal and truest part of you. It carries the qualities you need to fulfill your mission here on earth.
To that end, the soul holds many ingredients: your talents and gifts, your passion, your challenges, your unique lessons, and the resources available to you.
But, that doesn’t begin to explain the vastness and mystery of the soul.
The soul isn’t just a thing. It’s a way of living. It’s choosing depth over superficialities. It’s walking on both moist and dry ground. It’s getting stuck. It’s jumping into the deep end of your life. And, while it may be darker down there, in that darkness we can heal. In that darkness, we have empathy for how hard it is to be human.
Human level and soul level
Life operates at a human level and a soul level.
The human level is driven by love, fear, and duality. We see things as right or wrong, good or bad, etc. So much of our mental activity is consumed with trying to be enough, striving, pushing and pulling.
Plus, on a human level we have a lovely ego. The ego is the source of our fear, but on the positive side, it gives us our identity and individuality.
Life on a soul level is unconditional love and oneness, while at the same time watching ourselves make one mistake after another. What a crazy mixture this is, being both human and divine.
On a soul level you see life as your soul would see it. You’re focused on learning and growth. You have less fear because you see life as a classroom for learning.
Your soul may ask, what am I learning here? What does my soul need in this situation?
At a soul level, you are heart centered… you feel your way through life.
One of my favorite books for learning more about the soul and how it thinks, feels, and operates is Journey of Soul’s by Michael Newton Ph.D.
For additional understanding about what is the soul:
- Soul Meaning: What Is the Unique Soul?
- What Is Your Spirit?
- Are Souls Real? How to Know It’s Totally Real
- What is an Old Soul
- Soul Level vs Human Level
- Can I trust in Something Bigger
Science and Philosophy of the Soul
Here’s something I find endlessly fascinating: science is starting to ask the same questions mystics have always asked. What is consciousness? Where does it come from? Is there something that survives the body?
Modern philosophers and scientists are exploring the soul in ways that would have seemed radical a generation ago. Quantum physics, consciousness research, and soul theories are converging on ideas that spiritual seekers have known for centuries.
Soul consciousness suggests that awareness itself runs deeper than the brain. And the ancient concept of the soul of the world, the idea that all of life shares one animating soul, reminds us that we were never as separate as we thought.
Read more about science and philosophy of the soul:
- Modern Views of the Soul
- Fascinating Scientific Theories About the Soul
- What is Soul Consciousness
- What Is the Soul of the World?
Your Soul Has a Purpose and a Path
Your soul didn’t arrive in this life without intention. It came with a purpose, soul connections, and a path that was set in motion long before you were born.
The work of following your soul is learning to recognize and trust that deeper design, even when it doesn’t make logical sense.
Your Soul’s Unique Destiny
There’s a reason some desires keep returning no matter how many times you try and talk yourself out of them. That persistence is one of the ways your soul hopes to get your attention.
Your purposes are multi-layered and complex. It is so much more than what work you will do, although that is part of it.
Your destiny holds different timelines of what will happen based on your free will. We come into this life with a loose outline, and we get to choose if we will walk through door A, B, or C. And once we do that, we get more options to walk through.
The soul’s journey is truly fascinating.
I wrote The Butterfly Silhouette to help me work through my own doubt. Kat, the caterpillar, couldn’t see the bigger plan for her life. She couldn’t imagine that something so large lived within her.
The soul’s path is rarely straight. It goes two steps forward and one step back. But when you understand your journey as a hero’s journey, the challenges stop feeling like punishment and start feeling like preparation.
The first step in all of it is simply finding your soul, learning to feel its presence.
To read more about soul purpose and destiny:
- What Is Your Soul Purpose?
- What Is My Destiny?
- Are You Pursuing Dreams That Are Meant for You?
- Recognizing the Hero’s Journey on the Soul’s Unique Path
- How to Find Your Soul and Feel Its Presence
Soul Connections and Soulmates
The most significant people in your life are not here by accident. Before you were born, your soul made agreements with other souls to meet in this lifetime, to teach each other, challenge each other, and help each other grow. We call these soul contracts.
These connections show up as soulmates, soul ties, and that inexplicable feeling of recognizing someone the moment you meet them. Not all of these connections are easy. Karmic relationships carry weight. They repeat patterns until you do the deep work of understanding and releasing them.
Breaking free from karmic patterns is some of the most liberating work a soul can do. And soul reincarnation reminds us that some of these bonds stretch across lifetimes, far deeper than any single human story can hold.
To read more about soul connections, soulmates and other relationships the soul chooses:
- Soul Contracts
- Soulmates
- What Are Soul Ties?
- Soul Recognition
- Soul Reincarnation
- Breaking Free From Karmic Patterns So You’ll Be Free
- Karmic Relationships and Bonds
- Soulmate versus trauma bond
Signs Your Soul Needs Attention
When the Soul Is Struggling
Your soul speaks through your feelings. When something feels hollow or joyless, when you’re going through the motions but nothing feels real, that’s not a mood. That’s your soul asking to be heard.
A neglected soul shows up quietly at first. Restlessness. A nagging sense that you’re living someone else’s life. Some of us push through it for years without realizing what’s happening. Soul crushing experiences, the situations and relationships that slowly erode your sense of self, leave a real mark. I’ve seen this in clients and I’ve felt it myself. Recognizing these signs isn’t cause for despair. It’s the beginning of finding your way back to yourself.
Read more about when the soul needs attention:
- Signs of a Neglected Soul: 4 Simple Ways to Know
- When Life is Soul Crushing
- How to Find Self-Fulfillment When You’re Dissatisfied With Life
Awakening and Evolving Your Soul
The soul doesn’t stand still. It’s here to grow, to learn, to shed what no longer fits, and to become more fully itself. This process is not always comfortable. But in my experience, it is always meaningful.
The Soul Awakening Process
Soul awakening often arrives uninvited. A loss. A crisis. Or a quiet but persistent sense that the life you built no longer fits. Suddenly what once satisfied you doesn’t anymore. What once felt like enough feels small.
This is not falling apart. This is your soul waking up. Evolving as a soul means embracing this process even when it’s disorienting. It means learning your soul lessons, giving your unique gifts, and committing to your own becoming. I’ve found that growth at this level doesn’t move in a straight line. It spirals. It circles back. Each time you return to the same lesson, you understand it more fully than you did before.
Read more about awakening of the soul:
Embracing Complexity and Depth
The soul is not simple. And the path of following it isn’t either. One of the soul’s greatest teachers is duality, the tension between opposites that runs through every human life. Light and dark. Joy and grief. Certainty and doubt. The soul doesn’t ask you to resolve this tension. It asks you to hold it.
This is where depth psychology becomes so valuable. It helps us uncover what lives beneath the surface, the patterns and unconscious forces that quietly shape our inner world. Prior knowledge, those things you simply know without explanation, is your soul’s own wisdom surfacing. Lifelong learning keeps the soul alive and growing. And the relationship between spirituality and mental health is real. When I tend my spiritual life, everything else steadies. The soul and the mind are far more connected than most of us realize.
Read more about how complex the soul and this universe is:
- What Is Duality?
- Embracing Paradox
- Depth Psychology in Everyday Life
- Lifelong Learning
- Prior Knowledge
- Spirituality in Mental Health
Soul Travel
Most of us astral travel without realizing it. During sleep, the soul leaves the physical body and moves into the astral plane, a dimension described as a bridge between heaven and earth, free from the constraints of karma. It’s largely where our deceased loved ones hang out while watching over us.
I’ve had astral travel experiences that feel like hovering far above the earth, in open space, easily coming into contact with other souls. It’s different from dreaming. Dreams are symbolic stories created by the unconscious mind. Astral travel has a different quality entirely. A clarity. A felt sense of actually being somewhere.
Setting an intention before sleep is simpler than most people think. Before I go to sleep, I connect with God, Source, and the archangels, say my gratitude prayers, and simply tell my higher self and spirit guides that I’d like to astral travel. That’s it. Keeping a journal nearby helps too. Even small fragments, a feeling of warmth, a sense of hovering, a face you recognized, are worth writing down.
Read more:
Aligning With the Divine
Following your soul ultimately leads you here. To the recognition that your soul is not separate from the divine. It is an expression of it.
Spiritual alignment is the experience of being in harmony with your soul and with something greater than yourself. It’s not a destination you arrive at once and stay. It’s a daily returning to what is true. Soul power is not control or dominance over others. It’s the quiet, unshakeable groundedness that comes from being fully yourself, rooted in your soul and connected to Source.
Each morning before I get out of bed, I say: I am that I am. I am where God is. God is with me. It’s a simple practice, but it shifts everything. It’s the soul claiming its divine nature, its inseparability from the infinite.
Oneness spirituality takes this further, into the understanding that we are all expressions of a single unified consciousness. And woven through all of it is the sacred otherness of life, that quality of mystery and wonder just beneath the surface of ordinary moments, always available when you’re paying attention.
Read more:
- Spiritual Alignment
- Spiritual Power
- I Am That I Am
- Oneness Spirituality
- The Sacred Otherness of Life
Living as a Soul in Daily Life
Following your soul is not reserved for meditation retreats or moments of crisis. It happens in the ordinary texture of your days, in the choices you make, the way you move through the world, and the depth you bring to even the smallest moments.
What Soulful Living Looks Like
Soulful living is not an aesthetic. It’s an orientation. It means making choices rooted in depth and authenticity rather than performance or obligation. It means asking not just what you want, but what your soul actually needs.
Soul-centered living places the soul at the center of everything: how you make decisions, how you spend your time, who you let into your life. Soulfulness is the quality of being fully present and attuned to what matters. It’s what I notice in people who have done real inner work. There’s a settledness to them. An aliveness. If you’re a sensitive soul, and many seekers are, learning to thrive in a world that can feel overwhelming is its own spiritual path. And metaphors matter more than we give them credit for. The soul speaks in images and symbols and story. Learning to read that language changes how you see everything.
Here you go for additional reading:
- Soulful Living
- Soul-Centered Living
- Soulfulness
- Soulful
- Everyday Spirituality
- How to Thrive as a Sensitive Soul
- Metaphors in Spirituality
Living With Intention and Meaning
One of the most powerful things you can do for your soul is stop living on autopilot. Conscious living means bringing real awareness to your daily choices and asking a simple but radical question: does this align with who I truly am?
When you set goals from your soul rather than your ego, goals that feel true rather than impressive, everything shifts. You begin finding meaning not just in the big moments but in the quiet ones. A morning cup of coffee. A walk outside. A conversation that goes somewhere real. Spiritual surrender is woven through all of this. It’s not giving up. It’s releasing your grip on how things are supposed to look and trusting that your soul, aligned with something greater, already knows the way.
You can read more here:
- Living With Intention
- What Is Conscious Living? How to Make Intentional Daily Choices
- Soulful Goal Setting
- How to Find Meaning in Ordinary Moments
- Spiritual Surrender
The Soul in Relationship With Others
Your soul doesn’t grow in isolation. It grows through connection, through the people who mirror you, challenge you, and call you forward into who you’re becoming.
Recognizing a beautiful soul in another person is one of life’s quiet gifts. It’s soul recognizing soul. Giving yourself grace, extending to yourself the same compassion you’d offer someone you love, is not a luxury. It’s essential soul care. And shared humanity reminds us that beneath all our differences, we’re all navigating the same fundamental journey. Earth angels, those rare people who carry an unusual light and love into every room they enter, remind us that the divine shows up in human form more often than we realize.
If you’d like to read further:
Practical Ways to Follow Your Soul
Connecting With Your Soul
All of this begins with one simple but profound practice: actually connecting with your soul. Not as a concept. As a living, felt presence within you.
This means carving out quiet time and genuinely listening inward. It means creating a space in your home that is intentional and peaceful, somewhere your soul feels at home. It even means bringing presence to the ordinary tasks of daily life. I love the idea of soulful housekeeping, approaching your home and your routines with care and mindfulness, because it turns the mundane into something sacred. When you treat the small things with reverence, the soul notices. And it responds.
Here are additional resources:
Resources for Following Your Soul
If something in this guide stirred you, I’d love to support you further.
The Butterfly Silhouette: 12 Principles for Following Your Soul Where It Must Go is the foundation of everything I teach. It won the San Francisco Book Festival in both Spirituality and Poetry in 2012. Using the metaphor of a caterpillar’s transformation, it illuminates the soul’s journey of becoming and gives you 12 Principles and a practical Toolbox for following your soul in your own life.
The Soul Alignment Audio Program is my personal daily practice for connecting with your soul and staying attuned to what is true. It’s $37 and something I use myself every single day.
And if you’re ready to go deeper into any of the topics we’ve covered here, these complete guides are waiting for you:
